For the love of money is the root of all evil

The Alliance of Throne and Altar–Rothbard

The major theme of Conceived in Liberty, which also applied to hisother historical work, was the idea of Liberty versus Power. Throughouthistory, there has been an eternal battle between those who wield thecoercive power of the State apparatus, and those who wish to resist it.Throughout most of human history, to quote the famous words of ThomasHobbes, life was “nasty, brutish and short.” Tyrants of all stripes, emperors,kings, feudal barons, and warlords, subjugated the masses and ruledover them with an iron fist. The dominant economic system of this ancienrégime was mercantilism, where governmentsubsidies and other formsof protectionism were granted to favored businesses and other specialinterests. Then suddenly, in Britain and the American colonies in the 17thand 18th centuries, this changed, and much different forms of governmentwere created — ones that were more limited in scope and allowed forgreater liberty. The American colonies in particular cast off the oppressiveshackles of their royal governors, and then later the British governmentcompletely in the American Revolution, in favor of a far more limited governmentand laissez-faire economic system that the people directly controlled.The fight was not over however, as those fighting for liberty andlimited government continually clashed with those wishing to expand thesize of government in the 19th century.How did this occur? How were the ideas of Liberty versus Power disseminatedto the broad populace? Why, for so long, did the public standthe depredations of their rulers in the ancien régime? Why did they laterrevolt against this dispensation and fight for liberty? And fast forwarding to the Progressive Era, why did the pendulum shift back to statism andacceptance of increased state rule?

The answers to all of these questions involve the role of ideology andintellectuals filtering these messages down to the public. Throughout history,there have been two types of intellectuals. The first are the court intellectuals,originally the priests and the clergymen. Their job was to convincethe public of the righteousness and legitimacy of the ruler throughreligious means (such as “The King is Divine”) and to truckle to his predations.In return for these necessary public relations, the court intellectualswere to receive their fair share of the pelf taken from the public. Thisrelationship was the famous Alliance of Throne and Altar that existedthroughout most of history in various forms. On the other hand, thereare the radical and revolutionary intellectuals who were out to spread themessage of libertyand fight against the coercive order. They were not in itfor power or prestige but instead liberty and justice.The principal transmission mechanism during the American Revolutionwas the natural rights theory of John Locke. While Locke’s work providedthe ultimate theoretical edifice, it was very abstract, and the messagewas instead distributed to the public through the much more popular andeasier readings of Cato’s Letters, written by John Trenchard and ThomasGordon.10 Here were the works that instilled in the public a radical libertarianideology that emanated in various ways in subsequent years. Theimportance of intellectuals in filtering ideas to the public, statist or libertarian,would be a major theme of Rothbard’s historical work.